The Big Story

It's been one week since Pat King, one of the key organizers of the convoy protest, was found guilty of 5 of the 9 charges against him.   The verdict came as we continue to wait on rulings for two other leaders of the demonstration that crippled the capital in 2022. So what will this first verdict mean for the other cases, and where is the alt-right movement heading in Canada amid these proceeding...

Canada's NATO allies have called us out.   Our defence partners, especially the United States, want Canada to increase defence spending to at least 2% of annual GDP.   The Trudeau government says it has a plan to get there, but not until 2032.  Is that good enough and what is the current state of our military?   Host David Smith talks to Richard Shimooka, a defence policy expert and a senior fello...

The  holidays are coming and times are tough.  We're digging into whether the federal government's 2 month GST holiday and upcoming rebate will actually help the economy and your family.     Host Cormac Mac Sweeney is in conversation with Kevin Page, former Parliamentary budget officer and current President of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.     We love f...

He's not even president yet, but Donald Trump's promises around tariffs are sending shockwaves and even some panic across the country.   Are these empty threats?  What comes next?  Our Mike Eppel sits down with Ian Lee, Associate Professor of Management, Sprott School of Business at Carleton University.   We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find u...

After years of increasing immigration to Canada and record population growth, the Trudeau government has reversed course.     The Prime Minister now admits they made a mistake.. The feds have slashed Canada’s immigration target for 2025 from 500,000 to 395,000 and restricted the number of non-permanent residents who will be able to come to work or study here.     At the same time, new research sho...

Torontonian Henry Wolfond is traveling into space today as a paying customer aboard Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket.     He joins The Big Story with host Richard Southern to talk about why he’s doing it, what he’s paying for it, and about the Taylor Swift bracelets his granddaughter wore to the pop star's Toronto show that he's bringing with him into the great beyond. Guest: CEO of Bayshore Capital...

This week marked 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.     Vladimir Putin has updated Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine in response to Joe Biden authorizing long-range missiles for the Ukrainian military. Experts say the world’s nuclear temperature just went up. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is set to take back the Oval Office in January. He has threatened to pull U-S support for Ukraine entirely. He h...

Guest: Patrick Groom, labour lawyer with McMillan LLP   We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes.  You can find us: Through email at  hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca  Or by calling 416-935-5935 and leaving us a voicemail Or  @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us: Through email at he...

According to the former and future US President, Canada's water is like a 'very large faucet' that one could turn on, say, to help California in a drought, or any other Pacific Northwest state that might need it. According to scientists, it's ... not like that at all. But still, Canada has water. And increasingly, the United States needs it. Does Trump actually intend to ask for, buy or even take...

For decades, it's been the dream that children will grow up to have more opportunities and a better life than their parents did. Not many young people see that as possible anymore. Wealth and income inequality, combined with the affordability and housing crises, have created a world in which a majority of them don't believe they'll be able to own a home. There are some who are sure that they will,...

We've had an update to one of our most popular episodes -- the counterfeit toonie. Enjoy! --------------------------------- They call it the "camel-toe toonie", and you will understand why as soon as you look at the front right paw of the polar bear on it. Since they were first discovered in circulation in 2020, estimates range from at least tens of thousands to likely millions of them reaching ci...

This episode first aired on November 14, 2024 over at In This Economy?!, our sister show at the Frequency Podcast Network. The show helps Canadians understand the systems behind their money problems so they can make informed decisions about their personal finances. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a follow!  The colder weather has finally arrived, and with it a big question: Is...

Many of us have a favourite garment — a sweater we've been wearing for the last ten years,  or a pair of sweatpants we throw on every night before cozying up in front of some Netflix. Then there's all those other clothes, the shirts you buy on sale that are lucky to survive ten wash cycles, or the sweaters that pill up almost instantly.   Increasingly, it feels like more and more clothes belong to...

The crime is horrific. The details are as bad as you can imagine. The woman at the centre of it, though? Exhibiting incredible bravery, under the worst possible circumstances. The rape trial of Gisele Pelicot's husband, and 50 other men, has transfixed the world. Not simply because of the crime itself, but because of the way Gisele has wrestled the narrative away from the ones the world all too of...

We tend to see the challenge we face in terms of raw numbers and targets that need to be hit. The number of dead from extreme weather. The all-time highs in temperature set in whatever city we're living in. The emission reduction figures we're definitely not on track to hit. And it can be depressing, and demoralizing, to say the least. But there's good news: Focusing on the numbers doesn't change...

If the entire online ecosystem feels like it's trying to scam you these days, well, you're not alone. And you're not wrong either. The past few years have seen a truly seismic growth in the amount of money Canadians have reported as lost to fraud, and most experts will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg. So what do you need to know about the most popular ones to protect yourself before yo...

It's been three years now since single-game sports betting was legalized in Canada. And since that time, it's become available...everywhere. Especially on your phone, in any number of apps, 24 hours a day. At the time there were concerns about what that easy access would do to problem gamblers. And we're finally getting a pretty clear picture of just what that has wrought. So what can we tell abou...

With some already starting their holiday shopping, we bring you an episode from our vault on dynamic pricing. Enjoy! --------------------------------- You and a friend might be given two different prices by the same website for the same item. Heck, you might be given two different prices yourself depending on where you are when you're browsing the site. It's a phenomenon that began as dynamic pric...

This episode first aired on November 7, 2024 over at In This Economy?!, our sister show at the Frequency Podcast Network. The show helps Canadians understand the systems behind their money problems so they can make informed decisions about their personal finances. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a follow!  This holiday season, about one third of Canadians are planning to eithe...

It's been a tough news week, let's end it on a butter note. Thieves in Guelph, Ontario—but not just in Guelph, Ontario—have been stealing hundreds of pounds of butter from grocery stores, making off with about $1,000 worth of the yellow gold with each successive heist. It's been happening for months, and the only people police managed to charge so far ... have vanished. So why butter? Why so MUCH...

In the end, it wasn't even particularly close. And now Canada and the world can only prepare for what a second term of President Donald Trump might look like. As the United States' closest neighbour, Trump's plans have the potential to impact many aspects of Canadian life—from trade to immigration to defence spending, our next federal election and much more than that. So what should Canada do now...

Over the past several years, measures of economic productivity have seen Canada tumbling. First slowly, then rapidly. Once nearly at par with the United States, we've fallen far behind them—and by some measures we're one of the developed world's least productive countries right now. How did this happen? Which industries are lagging behind and dragging us down? How much of this fall was within Cana...

With the invasion of Ukraine nearing the 1000-day mark, there are questions about where Ukraine's defenders find themselves. Russia has been making a strong push to stake out more ground, and in Russian-occupied territory there a reports of its soldiers hunting civilians. Despite an offensive into Russia earlier this year, the situation seems to be dire. And when America votes today on its next pr...

It's been almost 30 years since a narrow vote in the 1995 referendum ended the last threat to Canadian unity. And while it's not as though there hasn't been idle talk since then from angry provinces and their citizens, there's never again been a serious question of a province seceding from Canada... But history repeats, and as the 30th anniversary of the 1995 vote looms, a look at the underlying p...

This week, with all of the wrappers and candy scattered around after Halloween, we're revisiting a episode from 2023 about Toronto's so-called trash bandits. Enjoy!   -------------------------------------------------------- One hundred years ago, raccoons were so rare in Toronto, that a mysterious creature rummaging in a garbage bin warranted a newspaper report. Today, raccoons are basically the c...